Over 600,000 seedlings planted. The goal is to plant 200 million seedlings. In Mahagi Territory’s Lendu Plateau—one of Africa’s most biodiverse and most deforested landscapes—Environmental Defenders’ community grantee VCCI is leading a forest comeback that the world needs to see.
On the morning of March 7, 2026—as part of the International Women’s Day activities—the women of VCCI gathered at a seedling nursery in Ramogi, in the Chefferie des Mokambo, Mahagi Territory. They had not come to march or hold signs. They came with their hands and their tools, and they planted trees. It was a deliberate act—political, ecological, and deeply personal all at once. In a landscape where the hills that once held dense montane forest now stand largely bare and wind-scoured, the planting of 6,746 seedlings across nine native species is not a ceremonial gesture. It is a declaration that the Lendu Plateau belongs to its communities and that its forests are coming back.
On this International Day of Forests, March 21, 2026, Environmental Defenders is marking the occasion not with a general statement about the global forest crisis, but with a specific story from one of the most ecologically important and least documented corners of the Congo Basin: the Lendu Plateau of Ituri Province, where its community grantee, the Vision Collective pour le Changement Intégral (VCCI), is quietly mounting one of the most significant grassroots reforestation efforts in the region. This is that story.
A Biodiversity Hotspot on the Brink
The Lendu Plateau sits in Djugu and Mahagi Territories, Ituri Province, in the western arm of the Albertine Rift—the geological corridor running from the DRC through Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania, west of Lake Albert. Conservation scientists rank the Albertine Rift among the most critical biodiversity hotspots on Earth: it harbors more endemic species than any other equivalent area in continental Africa and is home to roughly half of Africa’s bird species, 40 percent of its mammals, and exceptional concentrations of primates, amphibians, and flowering plants found nowhere else on the planet. The forests of the Lendu Plateau are part of that irreplaceable web. Yet across the plateau today, those forests exist in fragments. Generations of agricultural expansion, charcoal production, firewood collection, and the displacement of communities during cycles of armed conflict have stripped the hillsides. Fidèle Kasangadjo, an agronomist and environmental engineer from Environmental Defenders, visited the Ramogi nursery site on March 7. Fidèle Kasangadjo’s assessment was not a metaphor. It was a field observation.
The Numbers Behind the Crisis
The local reality in Mahagi Territory sits within a national catastrophe of documented scale. In 2024, the Democratic Republic of Congo recorded its highest-ever rate of deforestation, losing more than 1.38 million hectares of tree cover—a record, according to satellite data compiled by Global Forest Watch, that surpassed the previous year’s record. The DRC holds the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon, storing an estimated 30 billion tonnes of carbon in its ecosystems. Yet the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) consistently ranks the DRC among the countries with the greatest forest loss globally. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates that up to 21 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the agriculture, forestry, and land use sector, making tropical forest protection among the most consequential climate interventions available. In eastern Congo, where Ituri Province is located, the drivers of deforestation include artisanal mining, conflict-driven displacement, charcoal demand, and chronically weak land governance—forces that research published in Nature Sustainability has found to operate in destructive synergy, pushing deforestation rates significantly above national averages.
Six Thousand (6000) Seedlings and a Vision for Millions
The Vision Collective pour le Changement Intégral (VCCI) was founded in 2023 and is based in Mahagi, Ituri Province. It is not a large institution. But it is a determined one. Today, VCCI counts 2,846 members — 1,723 of them women — organized around a shared commitment to environmental protection, food security, and community resilience. At their Ramogi nursery in the Chefferie des Mokambo, the numbers tell a story of methodical ambition: as of early March 2026, the nursery holds 6,746 seedlings in active growth, distributed across three strategic categories—1,326 redwood plants, 2,839 white wood plants, and 2,581 fruit trees. The biological diversity is intentional, structured around nine specific native and agroforestry species: Khaya anthotheca (East African mahogany) , Afzelia Africana , Albizia, and others. This endeavor is not monoculture replanting. It is an attempt to restore the layered, multi-species forest structure that once characterized the Lendu Plateau.
The March 7 planting event, organized to mark International Women’s Day, brought these numbers to life. Women from VCCI’s membership worked side by side in the nursery, tending seedlings and reinforcing the infrastructure that will sustain the planting program through the coming growing seasons. The symbolism was pointed. “This day must not be limited to superficial festivities,” said the women’s representative in her address at the event. “It must be an occasion for reflection and concrete action.” In a territory where the combined pressures of poverty, climate disruption, and environmental degradation fall disproportionately on women — who depend on forests for water, fuel, food, and medicine — the act of women leading the reforestation effort is both practically significant and politically meaningful.
“Our determination to restore nature is guided by our will for a sustainable future.” — VCCI Women’s Representative, Ramogi, March 7, 2026
Fidèle Kasangadjo, the Environmental Defenders engineer who attended the event, praised the group’s commitment and connected their work directly to the science of forest restoration. He explained to VCCI members the role that trees play in sequestering carbon dioxide, restoring soil fertility, and regulating the water cycle—all of which are indispensable to the agricultural productivity on which the Ramogi community depends. He also reminded them that the broader reforestation program supported by Environmental Defenders covers three chefferies: Wagungu, Mokambo, and Anghal — a landscape-scale intervention designed to reconnect forest fragments across the plateau.
The Phase 1 results speak directly to what is possible when communities are given resources and authority. According to VCCI’s project officer, the first phase of the program has already distributed more than 600,000 seedlings—a figure made possible by a direct grant from Environmental Defenders. Looking ahead, VCCI’s Executive Director, David Unencan, has set an ambitious long-term target: the distribution of more than 200 million seedlings across the program area. That goal is extraordinary by any measure. But it reflects the scale of the problem—and of VCCI’s resolve. Beyond reforestation, the organization has also launched a project to create fish ponds, diversifying community income and strengthening food security alongside the environmental restoration work.
Policy Frameworks That Must Reach the Ground
VCCI conducts its work in a policy-driven environment. The DRC’s 2002 Forest Code established foundational protections and community access rights for the country’s forests. In 2014, Decree No. 14/018 on local community forest concessions created a formal legal pathway for communities to hold and manage forest resources. The 2018 National Strategy for Community Forestry (SNFC) went even further by laying out a vision for participatory governance based on community rights and the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples. At the international level, the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use—signed by 137 governments in 2021, including the DRC—commits signatories to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework of 2022 sets the 30×30 target, requiring the protection of 30 percent of the planet’s land by the decade’s end. Research consistently confirms that communities like VCCI are central to achieving these targets: deforestation rates in community-managed forests in the DRC run 23 percent below the national average and 46 percent below the rates recorded in logging concessions. At COP28, the DRC was among four countries specifically identified for support through the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership. These frameworks matter. But they mean little without the funding and political will to reach communities like VCCI and landscapes like the Lendu Plateau.
Bare Hills, and What Comes After
On International Day of Forests, Environmental Defenders invites the world to look closely at what is happening in Mahagi Territory. Not as a feel-good story, but as evidence—evidence that community-led reforestation works, that women are among the most effective custodians of the world’s forests, and that when grassroots organizations are given real resources and real authority, they move with speed and conviction that top-down programs rarely match. More than 600,000 seedlings are planted. A landscape-scale program spanning three chefferies. The program aims to plant 200 million trees. A majority of women members understand, viscerally, what forest loss costs their communities—and what restoration can return. The Lendu Plateau’s hills are bare today. They do not have to stay that way.
About Environmental Defenders: Environmental Defenders (ED) is a regional organization working on environmental conservation, biodiversity protection, community rights, and forest governance across the Congo Basin and Albertine Rift region. For more information, visit www.watetezi.org
About VCCI: Vision Collective pour le Changement Intégral (VCCI) is a community-based organization founded in 2023 and based in Mahagi, Ituri Province, DRC. VCCI has 2,846 members, 1,723 of them women, working for environmental protection, food security, and sustainable livelihoods in Mahagi Territory. VCCI is a grantee and community partner of Environmental Defenders.
